


a single man in possession of a good fortune

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Family, Injury Recovery, Major Character Injury, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Tumblr Ask Box Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 10:53:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18991216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: It was only when he was well enough to get up and stagger into the drawing room to sit by a window and look at the garden - the weather being sufficiently cold that going out of doors was out of the question, and the London dirt being uninviting enough to contraindicate it anyway; he was disconcerted to discover that he’d been too sick to be moved - that Marjorie explained. In addition to surviving, he was to be felicitated on the fact that his Great-Uncle Richard had died and left him a lot of money.***Colonel Fitzwilliam unexpectedly inherits some money prior to his visit to Rosings, and indulges a tendresse.





	a single man in possession of a good fortune

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AMarguerite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/gifts).
  * Inspired by [An Ever-Fixed Mark](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8523001) by [AMarguerite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/pseuds/AMarguerite). 



> I am indebted to Margz firstly for the tumblr prompt that brought this to life ("Elizabeth/ Colonel Fitzwilliam. Elizabeth meets Colonel Fitzwilliam in London before she meets Mr. Darcy. They hit it off splendidly— but he’s off to India and she’s back to Hertfordshire. They meet again in Kent, where the Colonel has a bit more money now than in canon") even if I couldn't quite make the timing work, and secondly for Colonel Fitzwilliam's friends and relations, who I shamelessly stole from her.

The wound had been a fairly trifling one, as these things went; or so it had appeared. Wellington had packed Richard back off to England, saying that it was no use his hanging around trying to work and not mending, and he had enjoyed a wretched crossing which had left him weak, sick and feverish. Richard remembered very little of it, only Darcy catching him as he staggered off the ship, and Georgiana bending over him, calling his name, sounding very distant and looking pinched and frightened.

 

“Damn it,” he said, “didn’t mean to scare you,” and then caught himself up with a mortified jolt and apologised for cursing, but whatever had come out of his mouth didn’t seem to have much relationship to what he thought he had said, for Georgiana only reacted with the same deep crease of a frown between her eyebrows that was Darcy’s and Lady Catherine’s, that had once been Lady Anne’s.

 

He remembered nothing at all of the journey to London, and rather less of the visits of endless useless fashionable doctors, all of them causing him little more than pain, until he lost his temper and gained enough lucidity to demand a proper surgeon and name the best candidate he could think of, even though he suspected the man was in the Peninsula. It transpired that he was not. Richard knew this because Darcy gave a short nod, left the room, and returned some time later propelling Bénet Pascal before him.

 

“You idiot,” Pascal said, and set to work. Richard didn’t remember much of that either, fortunately; only that Pascal didn’t leave, and insisted on everyone washing their hands continually, and poured vinegar over his wounds before and after he was done, which seemed like a particularly brutal form of sadistic torture.

 

He remembered being as limp as a rag, and Pascal saying with professional satisfaction “The fever has broken; he should go on more prosperously now,” and his father saying, “We are indebted to you, sir; if you should ever set up in private practice I hope you will give us your direction.” That was so strange, his father praising one of his friends, that Richard tried to sit up and comment on it. He was pushed down by gentle hands, and then he slept, properly this time.

 

When he woke, winter sunlight was streaming into the room, and his sister-in-law was sitting beside his bed reading Olympe de Gouges in the original French.

 

He stirred, and tried to say something, but his throat was dry. Marjorie looked up at once, and helped him sit up a little; his arm ached, but it was already a duller ache than it had been in the Peninsula, without the fever-raging edge the pain had had before. Marjorie held a glass of water to his lips, and he sipped at it greedily.

 

“I don’t know what to congratulate you on first,” she said.

 

“What?” Richard croaked.

 

Marjorie eyed him forensically. “Perhaps when you’re feeling a little more awake,” she said. “Rest, Richard.”

 

It was only when he was well enough to get up and stagger into the drawing room to sit by a window and look at the garden - the weather being sufficiently cold that going out of doors was out of the question, and the London dirt being uninviting enough to contraindicate it anyway; he was disconcerted to discover that he’d been too sick to be moved - that Marjorie explained. In addition to surviving, he was to be felicitated on the fact that his Great-Uncle Richard had died and left him a lot of money.

 

Richard looked blankly at Julian for an explanation, which was probably a mistake.

 

“Not actually a great-uncle. Some sort of cousin really,” Julian said, vaguely. “Don’t think we’ve met him since we were boys - and then we played cricket on the lawn and ruined it.”

 

After a few moments of thought, it struck Richard that he did indeed have a namesake somewhere on the paternal side of the family, an eccentric old man, one of the nabobs, and profoundly disinclined to company in a way that couldn’t wholly be explained by the cricket incident… supposing Julian hadn’t confused this individual with a different curmudgeonly relative, which was wholly possible.

 

“Why me?” Richard said blankly, feeling completely unequal to the occasion.

 

“He said you were the only one with any spirit,” Marjorie said. “I imagine he was referring to your military service.”

 

“He said that… in the will?”

 

“No,” Marjorie soothed. “In a codicil.”

 

“Oh,” Richard said weakly. He lay back in his chair and thought for several minutes. “Not Honoria?”

 

“I suppose he felt Scotland didn’t count.”

 

“Oh,” Richard repeated.

 

Tea and a sustaining repast, calculated to restore the health of an invalid, arrived. Richard was picking through this without particular interest - it was mostly very boring - when it occurred to his sluggish brain to ask how much money he had now.

 

“Quite an elegant competence,” Marjorie said. “And your father says he has no intention of discontinuing your allowance, particularly if you choose to set up a household.”

 

Richard, a trifle stunned, looked at Julian for confirmation. Julian misinterpreted his glance, and uttered an actual numerical figure.

 

Richard sneezed tea all over his plate.

 

 

 

“I hardly know where I am to start,” he confessed, somewhat later.

 

“I suggest you start with the finances,” Marjorie said. She had finished Olympe de Gouges and was now reading Mary Wollstonecraft. “Mr Knightley will be able to assist you, but if you aren’t feeling quite enough the thing to deal with lawyers -” Richard shook his head firmly. “- then Darcy has already expressed a willingness to talk to you, regarding his own arrangements, and discuss what you might choose to do.”

 

“I don’t know that Darcy would be able to help.” He knew that Darcy was an attentive landlord, and one who had spent weeks going through Pemberley’s accounts searching for George Wickham’s sticky fingerprints and rooting out his influence wherever he could find it, but surely the lessons drawn from that didn’t apply to the relatively modest amount Richard had inherited. It was of considerable importance to him, but Darcy was much wealthier man than Richard, and moreover he had the practical workings of a significant estate to consider.

 

Marjorie closed the book and laid it down on her lap, giving the question her full attention before addressing it. “I think he would like to try,” she said finally. “And any advice he gives you will be very thoughtful and considered; one knows that before even broaching the subject.”

 

Richard nodded, and went back to his copy of _The Mysteries of Udolpho_ ; he was encouraged by the fact that it was increasingly easy to concentrate on the novel, and that he no longer spent so much time asleep.

 

“If, on the other hand, you do wish to set up a household,” Marjorie said thoughtfully, “you would be much better off if you asked me for assistance.”  
  
Richard was prevented from replying by his father’s sudden appearance. Marjorie’s _A Vindication of the Rights of Women_ disappeared under a cushion, and was replaced by some demure (and perpetually unfinished) embroidery.

 

“I assumed you might have thought of it,” Marjorie said, when Lord Matlock had left. “But perhaps -”

 

“No,” Richard said, thinking of the bright laughter and mischievous eyes he had tried not to become entangled with. He supposed Miss Elizabeth to be married by now; her lovely sister almost certainly would be. “No, I did think of it. But…”

 

His voice trailed off into nothing, and Marjorie didn’t press him.

 

The calculating look in her eyes worried him a little, though.

 

 

Christmas in Hampshire was overwhelming. Richard had been looking forward to the festivities and traditions; even his father’s company was less demanding in the presence of the assembled family and guests, and the familiarity of his childhood home warmed him through after a wretched start to the winter.

 

He had _not_ counted on the rapid spread of information regarding his inheritance through the neighbourhood, nor had he expected to become quite so… sought-after. If sought-after was the word. He felt like a particularly persecuted fox hearing the hounds in the next field.

 

The Twelfth Night ball, and a consequent influx of bold masked individuals, most of whom he’d known since his infancy and none of whom seemed to view him quite as they had done before, was the final straw. He fled for the billiards room, and closeted himself with Darcy and Julian, both of them sympathetic but only one of them truly understanding.

 

“Don’t you like any of them?” Julian enquired.

 

“No,” Richard said, taking refuge in simplicity. He had done his duty, in terms of dancing and talking and repeatedly explaining the same few basic facts about the army to very young women who seemed very childish to his eyes, and felt strongly that his brother could live without the details.

  
“What do you like?” Julian demanded, apparently completely stymied. Richard and Darcy’s eyes met in perfect understanding.

 

“Wit,” Richard said. “Courtesy. Independence of thought. I don’t know, Julian, I really hadn’t thought -”

 

He hadn’t expected to be in a position to support a wife - at least, a wife who wasn’t rich in her own right - for years. He had met plenty of women whose company he enjoyed, and had engaged in discreet relationships with a few; but a wife, a companion for the rest of his days, was a different matter. And the only woman he had been instantly, instinctively drawn to had been quite an impossible prospect, from a monetary point of view, and by now was nothing more than a memory. Even if Elizabeth Bennet hadn’t married in the course of the last year and a half, it was likely that his image of her bore very little resemblance to the reality.

 

Julian looked like a Labrador that had just been asked to conjugate a Latin verb. Richard decided not to make things worse by elaborating on any of this.

 

Darcy cleared his throat and gestured silently at the billiards table.

 

 

 

The March visit to Rosings was not to be escaped. Firstly because the army had not yet gone out of winter quarters; secondly because Richard’s arm had now healed completely and he was rapidly regaining his former strength; and thirdly because every time someone hinted that Richard might find a way to escape Darcy’s good humour was replaced with suppressed panic.

 

“I know it will be shocking,” Georgiana said, walking in Hyde Park with Richard and twisting a lace-edged handkerchief to shreds. “Lady Catherine is - well - is -”

 

Richard rescued her. “We both know our aunt’s disposition.”

 

Georgiana shot him a grateful look. “But I am glad Fitzwilliam will not be alone.”

 

“I am too,” Richard said. “And you know how much I enjoy your brother’s company. And you will enjoy spending time with Marjorie and Sybil, I hope.”  


“Oh yes,” Georgiana said, with what Richard hoped would eventually be enthusiasm. The marks of Wickham’s cruelty were slow to fade, and Georgiana remained extremely shy.

 

Richard managed to conceal from Georgiana the belief that this visit would be both excruciatingly dull and plain excruciating until his departure. He and Darcy played chess in the coach and speculated on the horrors that awaited them, which appeared (from the text of Lady Catherine’s imperious summons) to include a new clergyman and his wife. Why Richard and Darcy should be interested in the parson wasn’t clear, but Lady Catherine’s approving comments on him suggested that he was a sycophant and a bore of the highest order. Still, Richard had come into Kent for Darcy’s sake, and for the sake of good manners, and was prepared to tolerate whatever homilies - or embarrassing allusions to his valour in battle, per one mortifying sermon in Hampshire - Mr Collins inflicted on him. And what was more, he was willing to call on him and Mrs Collins, too.

 

After discovering that Mrs Collins had a guest, a childhood friend from Hertfordshire by the name of Elizabeth Bennet (“an unexceptionable young woman, if rather impertinent”), Richard revised this to _very_ willing to call on Mr Collins. It surprised him to learn that Darcy was not, and moreover was not inclined to explain why. Richard took this to mean that Darcy had had enough of people for the moment, and went by himself at the earliest opportunity, bearing Darcy’s excuses with him.

 

Miss Bennet was everything that he remembered, from her bright dark eyes to the lightness of her step. He wasn’t sure whether to be surprised or delighted or both, and he kept catching his breath as if his own lungs couldn't decide between the two. He called himself a fool for it, and tried to get his feet back on solid ground; it was only an inclination at present, after all. But her eyes brightened with pleased recognition when she saw him, and she laughed and talked and smiled with him, and Mrs Collins watched them as if Miss Bennet had perhaps mentioned him to her. Richard felt buoyed up and cheerful, animated as he had not been since before his injury, and quite immoderately happy to be in her company. Rosings had redeemed itself at a stroke; he only hoped the Collinses and their charming friend would dine there frequently, and that he would have many excuses to call on her.    

 

When he returned, full of good cheer and bonhomie, he found Darcy remarkably stilted and silent. This unhappy state of affairs rendered dinner even more hideous than usual, and as soon as Lady Catherine, Anne, and Anne’s companion rose from the table, Richard poured himself a large measure of port and demanded an explanation.

  
Darcy looked pained, and disappeared into his port glass for several long moments. Eventually, he took a deep breath and said stiffly: “When did you make the acquaintance of Miss Elizabeth Bennet?”

 

“I - in London,” Richard said, confused. “Her uncle Mr Gardiner does business with the regiment, and is a friend of my first colonel’s; he was invited to a number of gatherings, and his wife would sometimes chaperone his two nieces. Miss Jane and Miss Elizabeth. Miss Jane is the beauty, but Miss Elizabeth is…”

 

“Quite,” Darcy said, sounding strangled. He had rendered his face totally free of any clues to his present state of mind, which - given his usually expressive features - was both alarming and a dead giveaway that he was embarrassed.

 

Richard’s suspicions grew from seeds to saplings in an instant. “When did _you_ make their acquaintance?”

 

“In Hertfordshire,” Darcy said, so reluctantly that Richard might as well have gone at him with a pair of red-hot pincers to retrieve the information. “Her family home is near the house Charles Bingley has rented. Netherfield.”

 

Richard could feel various pieces of information he had picked up over his convalescence - Bingley’s impulsive nature; the local beauty he had recently been ensnared by; Darcy’s intervention to prevent what might once have been called a mésalliance - beginning to coalesce in his mind, and not in a particularly pleasant way either.

 

The saplings took root and turned to oaks, and Richard set his glass down with a more definite click than he had intended.

  
“Darcy,” he said. “What have you _done_?”


End file.
